forty-six

I hoped the neighbors were asleep as we supported a limping gargoyle and carried a centuries-old painting into the house in the middle of the night. We draped sheets over both, but I can imagine what we must have looked like.

We were unable to safely carry Dorian up the steep stairs leading to the attic, and Tobias insisted that he not climb the precarious stairs on his own until he was examined.

“You do not wish me to be in comfort in my attic?” Dorian sniffed.

“Soon,” Tobias promised. “Let me check out this wing first.”

Instead of folding into a natural arc, Dorian’s left wing hung at two jagged angles, like a ragged bolt of lightning. We made him as comfortable as possible in the living room.

“Can you move the wing?” Tobias asked.

Dorian’s right wing extended fully and knocked a detective novel off the coffee table. The motion was powerful, and the hefty hardback book skidded across the floor. His left wing didn’t leave his side. Dorian’s black eyes blinked in horror.

“It’s okay.” Tobias’s deep voice was calm and soothing. “We’ll get you fixed right up. You’ll be good as new in no time at all.”

Dorian’s nostrils flared and he clenched his gray teeth. “Why, then, does it feel as if a poker of molten lead were being poured over my wing?”

“Let me go get some supplies with Zoe,” Tobias said. “We’ll be right back.”

“Is that true he’ll be fine?” I whispered as we hurried down the stairs to the basement.

“I can set a bone. But a gargoyle wing? I doubt there’s an anatomy book for that.”

“But he’s stable?”

“I think so.”

“You think so?”

“See above: gargoyle.”

“We can’t very well take him to a hospital.”

Tobias ran his hand across his face and looked up at the ceiling. “You should go examine the painting. I’ll attend to Dorian.”

“I can help you with Dorian. The painting is safe. You—”

“It’s not for my benefit, Zoe. Why do you think doctors make loved ones leave the room before they get to work? You care too much for the little guy. I’m going to cause him more pain to help him.”

I nodded, but reluctantly. “I can give you a relaxing tincture and a salve for aches. That’ll help him get more comfortable once you’re done.”

“Show me where the wine is too.”

“Is that a good idea?”

“I’m about to set the badly broken wing of a petulant gargoyle. The wine is for me.”

After helping Tobias gather supplies, I removed the painting from the bag and carried it to my basement alchemy lab—but immediately thought better of it. I needed to study the old canvas as I would approach any alchemical problem, which first meant taking it to a space that wasn’t infused with my own alchemy.

I carried the painting to the attic and rested the canvas against a wooden shelf as I tore down the web of conspiracy theorist papers that plastered the attic walls. Once that was done, I looked over the warm colors that had been lovingly painted into the portrait of Nicolas, the details in the glass bottles behind him, and the anamorphosis perspective that made the walking stick say Alchemia when viewed from the proper angle.

Alchemical transformations can be shifted back and forth through stages—beginning with calcination, the process of heating a substance until it turns to ashes, and ending with coagulation, in which an element that has been reduced to its core is again reconstituted into a solid substance. It’s the same process as turning pigments into paint. When Perenelle created her paints, she must have infused her particular energy into the colors she used to paint this image.

What separates true alchemy from modern chemistry is how alchemy requires a connection between the person performing the experiments and the materials they’re using—and, of course, intent. In addition to the pure paints Perenelle had created for this masterpiece, she would have had to put her heart and soul into her efforts as she used the rough brush that transformed color into life. How could I undo the alchemy Perenelle had infused into the painting?

I thought about the medicines I’d sold in my apothecary shop, back when artists purchased chunks of earth and powders to create paints, before they forgot their roots and became dependent on colormen. When artists stepped into my shop, they weren’t looking to find a color on my shelf. Instead, they anticipated the painstaking process of following a recipe that would turn an element found deep under the earth into a brilliant cobalt to capture the sky, or transform dull lead into a bright white that showed the sparkle in a person’s eye.

I drew closer to the painting and lifted my hands within inches of the canvas.

A burst of lightning lit up the sky above us, causing a bright explosion of light to shine through the skylight. The skin on my hands looked nearly translucent in the blinding light, but the painting thrived. Though it didn’t physically move, the pigments came alive, their colors intensified.

A reflection in Nicolas’s eye caught my attention … I looked closer. It wasn’t just an illusion from the lightning. A reflection had been painted into his eye—a mirror image of the artist. Perenelle.

Perenelle Flamel was trapped inside the painting with her beloved Nicolas.

Perenelle saw me too. I was sure of it. And it gave me the true purity of intent I needed.

I took a deep breath and reached forward. My fingertips brushed against the rough surface. I didn’t hesitate. My hand tingled like a thousand mini lighting bolts as my fingers pierced the surface of the canvas. Instead of breaking the flax fibers, my hand disappeared from view. This was really happening. I didn’t think my heart had ever beat so furiously. I felt it pulsing through every inch of me, down to my fingers that were now inside the world of the painting.

A hand gripped mine. A scent overwhelmed my senses. Spicy frankincense, metallic mercury, and sweet honey.

Nicolas.

I pulled with all my might, cajoling the painting to give up her inhabitants. It felt like I was lifting the weight of someone who’d fallen into quicksand.

I held my locket for a moment, then pressed my other hand into the painting. A second hand gripped my arm. My balance shifted. I felt it a moment too late. I was falling into the painting.

I slipped on the hardwood attic floor and fell closer. My heart thudded. My ears rang. My feet cramped as I struggled to grip the floor. What would it be like to live in the world of the painting?

I fell further. My head banged into the frame. I cried out more in astonishment than pain. My arms were still inside the painting, now well past my elbows. The colors of the painting swirled and shifted before my eyes. I heaved with as much strength as my body allowed. The muscles in my arms quivered. My rubber-soled boots screeched as they slid on the hardwood floor.

The hands that gripped mine from inside the painting were warm. Living. The fingers that grasped my right hand were large and calloused. The hand that clutched my left was stronger than its small size would suggest. They both clung to me as if I were a lifeboat. I could feel that they didn’t mean to pull me into the painting, yet I knew I was losing.

My muscles gave out. I slipped further into the rich sunset colors.

Two of them. Two against my one. We were out of balance.

“Tobias!” I called out.

Alchemy isn’t magic. It doesn’t create something out of nothing. Its transformation requires equal parts of matter. My solo intent hadn’t been enough to transform two people. I needed another alchemist.

“Tobias!”

I was too far inside the painting to turn around when I heard the sound of the floor creaking behind me, but I knew the sound of his footsteps.

Wordlessly, Tobias wrapped his arm around my waist and tugged. I fell backward—along with two people I hadn’t seen in centuries. Nicolas and Perenelle. And a pool of blood that was quickly spreading across the attic floor.